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Sunday, 7 August 2016

In this review of Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen, Ada Chioma Ezeano
does an interesting feminist reading of the book. Finally, there is a response
to the question for a feminist reading of the text raised in our earlier review of the book. In this review, Ada Chioma Ezeano is thorough.

Ikenna, Boja, Obembe and Benjamin
are fishermen who only discover their adventurous skills when the chief
ventricle of their home leaves the home in Akure because his employer, the
Central Bank of Nigeria, transfers him to Yola. Prior to this transfer, the
Agwus fear no evil; the boys only fear their father who guerdons their skins
for even insignificant wrongs. In The Fishermen, Obioma raises a prophecy that
looks into the politics of gender while fictionalizing the society’s obtainable
stories about the dependent woman.

The book hinges its story on the
shoulders of Adaku Agwu, the mindless mother that leaves her sons to wander
away because her husband is away, and in bits, chronicles about the gossipy
hawker, Iya Iyabo, who can only raise malnourished sons because her husband is
dead, about the woman who sleeps with a mad man because her husband is dead,
and then about Abulu’s mother who raised a mad son, and a thieving son and a harlot
because her husband is away. All these women are evidences that there are
negative effects of having women depend solely on the man.

Chigozie Obioma’s story is a well
told story that depicts the dullness of the other gender in the 1990s, just
around when MKO Abiola’s raised hopes of presiding Nigeria gets annulled in
1993. It delineates the accumulated silence and passivity of the women and the
dire consequences of this inordinate virtue on the society. It is studded with
necessary pulchritudinous words and aims at leaving the reader with ultimate
satisfaction. He weaves a resplendent story that reveals the adventurous
spirits of boys, the dependent traits in women and the heroic genes in men. The
gamut of his oeuvre lies in the grand depiction of the deception garnered for
the women by the society.It also shows
the consequences of raising a girl-child to become nothing but a pride to her
groom, the beautiful bride who drops her pride to groom her groom. In the African
society, a girl-child that cooks all is preferred to the one that knows
all.

Adaku’s performative identity
reveals her to be a helpless dependent female. She is simply a helpmate who
upholds the irrational binary often invoked in regard to women. Under her nose,
her first four boys break free to become what they should not be. And breaking
free means shattering windows, hitting the crippled, skipping school, fishing
fish and then the apocalyptic prophecy.Adaku didn’t see that the gradual disappearance of Eme Agwu from the
home caused an ebbing of her sons’ uptight discipline. And as a ‘falconer’ she
stands on the hills to watch her sons die a slow death. ‘She is only fully
realised in the presence of (her husband). Her maternal vigilance falls apart
with his (Eme Agwu) momentarily absence.’

Another remarkable thing about
Adaku is that she tells a plethora of embarrassing stories while her husband
discusses politics and banking. Her husband is a banker while Adaku runs a
fresh food store in the open market, and only tsked when her husband ordered
her to quit going to the market on Saturdays. He changed her closing time from
7pm to 5pm. Still, she only tsked. Never mind that this is the same man who
ignored his wife when she repeatedly reminded him of the consequences of
leaving his growing boys for her alone.

All the women depicted in The
Fishermen needed the umbrella of a man to be. And when there is no man, the
women, like Iya Iyabo, whose husband, Yusuf, died in the war in Sierra Leone,
swim in the seas of endless needs. She perfectly raised two malnourished sons
while hawking groundnut and stories.

There is Aderonke who kills her
husband, Biyi. Aderonke is another woman who depicts the passivity of women in
the society. Here is a woman who depends on her drunken husband for money. Her
child, Onyiladun, is sick, and instead of finding alternative means of
procuring drugs for her sick child, she prefers to sit and wait for the drunk
man to come home and bring the money as a man. But Biyi brings on something
else. He beats her and her sick child, and to save her sick child as a mother,
she commits murder.

The mad man, Abulu, has a mother
who remains nameless. Abulu’s father embarks on a journey and does not return,
and there are three children to raise. However, can she cope without a man? Her
daughter leaves home to become a harlot. Her sons become thieves. And she
mindlessly stirs the insane one with the sight of her nakedness, and he rapes
her. In her motherly presence, her son’s madness detonates after killing her
brother. She couldn’t help because her husband isn’t there to help. If only she
is conditioned to be independent.

If only all the women in the book
are conditioned to be independent…

The Fishermen is indeed one book
whose footstep can cause a stampede. Obioma reminds the society, once again, of
what is at stake if the society keeps raising girls to depend on the men in
their lives, if the girl-child is expected to be nothing but a man’s daughter
or a man’s wife. The narrative does not fail to deeply highlight the
consequences of an unequal system for both genders. In fact, it mirrors
Adichie’s statement that ‘Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice.’
And Obioma has demonstrated that gender, if unchecked and uncorrected, will
pose great dangers to the society.

Monday, 8 February 2016

On the Bank of the
River
is a mesh of narratives. Enitan’s story hatches other stories, weightier
stories. And characters in their different shades.Though the story, for me, didn't start up
with the desired pace, I find consolation in the fact that I pressed on. And I
did get to that point where putting the book down became a huge challenge. This
anticipation, you should note, is not because there is a tinge of novelty in
the plot. NO!It gets to a stage in the
build up of the plot where you can without mincing words link some loose ends
in the story. It is a love story. But not just a love story; the intricacies
therein are nothing short of magical. You should read this book for its
dissimilarity with Africa Magic.

Love could look so
simplistic, so ordinary until it is subjected to the crucible of life's
complexities. Love is not love until the dross finally comes off the face of
the silver. Until you have fought with every will within to assert who or what
your heart really wants to follow. That doesn't mean situations you would
rather have stuff in the ass of any of the world's malcontents won't rear their
horned Grendel's heads. Matters of the heart are really complex.

On the bank of a
river, we find the concept of home play out as both young and old in Obade
ascribe a considerable amount of value to the river in their village. It
doesn't just serve a recreative purpose; it is a home. A home transcends piles
and piles of blocks set on some firm base. It's a place of solace, a place
where every arm around, visible or non-visible pulls you into the warmth of
reassuring embraces. On the Bank of the
River has shown that home could be anything. Anybody. Anywhere. For Enitan,
the concept of home can only be linked to her auntie, Jibike, as well as the
river.

Enitan. She could
have passed as the centre of the plot. She isn't. Her life is only a platform
for which the complexity of humanity can be put on display. Enitan is the
present that leads us back to the past. We don't know who Enitan is until her
past, before her birth, is unravelled. Enitan is the reason we meet the like of
Adeoye, a promising young doctor, Asake, and her sister, Jibike, Mama Yeye,
their aunt and their recessive father figure.

On the Bank of the
Riveris narrated in snips of
alternating times. You have references being made to the Nigeria of the 70s and
90s. In fact, a couple of chapters are years. The temporal setting of this
novel is sensitive to the socio-political situation of the country at such
times. The military rule in the country in the 90s does not escape mention in
the novel. This reminds me of Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and the treatment meted out to journalists
therein. It's the same thing in Adeniyi's book. Paul and Nomenclature (Adeoye)
are both victims of this. You remember Achebe's Ikem and Chris? Beatrice? If
you haven't met these guys, fix a date with them, you really need to.

Resistance does not
necessarily have to be a grand thing. It starts from the seeming trivial things.
There is a bit of racism that reflects in the relationship between Adeoye, his
uncle's wife, Angela and the trio of Root, Stem and Xylem. Having to call
humans Root, Stem and Xylem is a thingification
of their persons. Significance is attached to this naming act considering the
source it comes from: Angela. Angela, Adeoye's uncle's wife is white and
earlier in the novel we see her argue vehemently with Adeoye on issues of race
and colonialism. However, a little but significant instance of resistance in
the novel passes a message across:

'''Xylem?'' Adeoye repeated the name, and then said it
again, remembering his elementary biology.

''Yes.''

''That is out of the ordinary.''

Angela replied, ''I just love 'xylem' as a word, that's why.
But I never call him that because he hates it.'

''How was he able to get away from that?''

''When a man makes bold enough to say no, you cannot
force a name down his throat...''' [Emphasis
mine](203-204)

In a generation that
is trying all it can to go back to its roots, what Ifeoluwa Adeniyi does with
language is laudable. I appreciate that the diction amply reflects her culture.
She flexes her cultural muscle well in the book. My only issue with this feat
is the italicization of indigenous words. African literature ought to have
risen beyond this, I think. We should not ascribe triviality to such things as
this. Let's put our cultures on display. It isn't wrong for a reader who
doesn't understand what a word means to consult the gods of cyberspace. If we
must italicize every indigenous word that features in our works, then the
indigenous names too ought to be captured, slant. It must be said, by the way,
that Adeniyi's language brings delight. I watch out for language a lot and she
does not fail to deliver. Here are some:

“Whilst the moon glowed and the cool breeze took its toll on
the flesh, Asake began to dance. That artistic wriggling warmed them all into a
submission that made them still. Her body movements twisted with her back going
back and forth in an endless rhythm. She controlled the beat with her body
movements, tapping the ground with her legs as she danced. When she bent down
in style, she stood up by shaking her buttocks to the rhythm of the song...At a
particular point when she bent down, she danced round in that stance with an
equal grace as though she was standing up...” (70)

And this:

“This woman who was not her mother made her smile and she
knew her own mother could not even make her smile on the memories they shared,
were she to die. After long episodes of memory-orchestrated smiles, Enitan let
the torrents flow in a stream that if possible would bring the dead to life.
The torrents were necessary to wash away the grief. The grief was necessary to
sink in the reality. The reality was most important to live life again.” (106-107)

And I love the
innuendo here:

''What do you mean by fresh and dry pepper?'' Nomenclature asked Jibike.

''The legal wives are the fresh ones now and the concubines
are the dry ones,'' she replied.

Paul chuckled. ''Fresh pepper o., dry pepper o, they are
both pepper. Maybe you should consider the properties of dried pepper that make
it irresistible to men. First it is easy to use, no unnecessary rule, no time
limits. they are also readily available. They could be more peppery, you only
need to look around for a good one. You know what I mean?'' Jibike's husband
collapsed in laughter at what Paul had said...

''The flavour the fresh one gives you is better. it has a
good taste, a holy taste''... (239)

I don't have a doubt
Ifeoluwa Adeniyi's next book is going to be definitely better. While I wait for
that, I'll read On the Bank of the River
again. You should have a first read if you haven't.

Saturday, 16 January 2016

Shadow Self is a good book.
Somehow, I feel like saying that is an understatement. But what else can one
say about a book one really loves? Each page you flip is an invitation to
encounter creativity that delights. Sentences jump at you, sometimes they
tickle you. And you find yourself helpless in their grip, laughing, at times
shedding tears and wishing that something would make you remain in their world.
Imagine this:

''And what else could I do? My matric was so poor there was
no way I was going to university, not that I was interested. In class at school
I had dreamt about travelling - Galapagos, Antarctica and Route 66. And when I
wasn't doing that, I was thinking about Rajit and his naked body against mine
in the back of his father's Honda Ballade. (It's amazing what you can get up to
right under your parents' noses). I'd had no inclination at all to read my set
works, and no patience with studying. History was dull, maths was
incomprehensible, Afrikaans was tedious and I enjoyed the biology I was
learning with Rajit a lot more than fungal spores and the life cycles of
amphibians. Geography was my only saving grace.

But I was map reading my way out of there when I hit a dead
end.''
(34-35)

Paula Marais is a
gifted writer. The poetry and drama in her prose blows the reader away almost
all the time. One can tell from the experience of reading Shadow Self that she will
do well as a dramatist. Her characters' conversations are so racy one cannot
just have enough of them. I love this:

''Are you out of your
mind? Having Joe almost killed me. How can you be so selfish? If you really
loved me you'd go for the snip and the subject will be closed.''

And I don't know why
I couldn't just accept that and let it drop.

''It won't
necessarily happen again, what you went through, I mean,'' I persisted. ''This
time we'd be prepared.''

Thea's eyes blazed. ''I'm
done with babies, Clay. Done. I'm done with night terrors, done with nappies,
done with engorged boobs, and having to give up my life and my career for
somebody else. I am making something of my life now. I'm happy. Why can't you
be?''

''It's just - ''

''Just nothing. I
love you, Clay. Passionately. I'd do just about anything for you, but I'm sorry
- I can't go down that road again. It's taken all this time for me to find
myself. If you have more love to give, get a dog, go work in an orphanage. I
don't care, but I'm not having another baby suck the life out of me like a
leech.''

''Wow,'' I said. ''A
leech...A dog?''

''Well, you know what
I mean.''

''A dog. Seriously?''

''Okay, so you're not
a dog lover. Get a rabbit. A cat. Or volunteer at the Red Cross...'' (230)

Shadow Self has a dark plot. Its
characters are constantly in a maze of messy situations. They are real. So real
the reader finds himself in their every move. As they try to negotiate their
escape route out of one trouble, they find themselves getting neck deep in
another messy creek. No rest. You will almost cry for them, that's if you are
strong-hearted. I am not; my eyes spat some water.

Shadow Selftells the story of Thea Middleton. Thea, at the beginning of
the story, is cast in the light of an adopted kid. One finds out she isn't
eventually. Thea, unlike her cancerous brother, Robbie, does not get the kind
of attention she needs from her parents and thus tries to seek validation off
the four walls of her family. She falls in love with Rajit, an Indian guy her
parents disapprove of on the ground of racial disparities. Her pregnancy (of
course, Rajit's the culprit) marks the start of her predicament. Refusing to
leave Rajit and also to abort the baby earns her her mum's disownment. Her
marriage to Rajit is far, too far from her expectation. So much parental
intervention to struggle with and cultural chasms to bridge.

There is abuse too.
Paula Marais so crafts Thea's abuse in such a way that it isn't overtly stated
but she tasks her reader to dig stuff out of her words though I wish she would
have been more direct; abuse ought not to be masked. NO. Thea's second marriage
shows the prospects of success until she has Clay's first child, Joe. And the
struggle heightens. Postpartum disorder and a gruesome murder feature. And
selves become their own shadows. Nobody goes through postpartum disorder and
remains the same. The experience is just excruciating, even for a reader,
especially one like me whose first encounter with postpartum disorder is in Shadow
Self:

''But her face was redder and redder and she was opening her
mouth like a suffocating fish. Then without any warning, she fell forward.. She
landed on the linoleum floor. The chair crashed on top of her ankle. Thea
yelped, then began to caterpillar along the floor to a corner, as I watched,
horrified. When she reached the wall, she slithered upwards, banging her head
against the plaster...

...she kept on banging her head on the rough wall, like a
tantruming toddler. Over and over again. She was already bleeding from her
forehead, her nose. Even her ear lobe was scraped from the uneven wall. And all
the time these otherworldly noises coming from her throat. like a wolf
baying...'' (214)

Shadow Selfexplores motherhood and in fact, a couple of other things
about femininity. Motherhood and its many shades catch my attention. Thea's
perspective about motherhood differs from her mother's and they are both
altogether disparate from Asmita Ayaa's (Raj's mother). Thea's, though funny,
will give one a jolt anytime. She's the woman that hates to have babies (she
loves having her husband's full love instead) and she passes same to her
daughter. Her postpartum disorder only catalysed Sanusha's inherited view.

Sanusha. Shadow
Selfis about a woman, Thea,
one in whose story other women find their voices. Of these women, Sanusha is my
favourite character. Gawd! I love Sanusha! Shadow Self is a bulky book but
Sanusha gets me chortling all the time. I love child narration and I like that
Paula's eclectic narrative technique doesn't exempt Sanusha's side to every
slice of the tale. Sanusha reminds me of Lola Ogunwole in Sade Adeniran's Imagine
This. Though a couple of things serve as parallels in the lives of
Sanusha and her mum, she is different. She doesn't give a heck what others say
about her; she is independent and not in dire search for approval. Very perceptive,
Sanusha sees through other characters' lives and makes judgements, her own way.
She grows through the plot but the vivacity in her narrations matures with her.
Meet her:

It's not like I don't know about the birds and the bees -
isn't that a stupid way of putting it? I've looked up sex in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and there are pictures and everything. Not that I couldn't have
worked it out on my own. Appa brings all sorts of women home and the noises
they make at night aren't exactly soothing. But Clay's always seemed like a
nice guy and I can't imagine him and, well, all that stuff. But there's mom,
her tummy getting bigger and looking completely green as she eats whole
pineapples to stop herself from puking.

And boy, is she grumpy. I'm doing my best, but she's a pain
in the royal ass, getting me to do this, and do that, like being pregnant makes
her handicapped. I mean, in some countries in the world, women give birth in
the fields and then carry on working. So why is she always griping?'' (164).

A happy story doesn't
make a good literature. But it takes expertise to write such an emotionally
charged story Paula Marais. way. Paula Marais' is dark, sad but you don't just want to
drop the book till you turn the last page. Though the plot seems disjointed at
the beginning, different parts of the jigsaw start coming together with each
character's account. Maximising the first person narrative technique this way
helps the flow of the story and it allows causality and suspense play out well.
However, it doesn't cover the many perspectives there are to the story. On
account of this, I feel Rajit, Thea's mum and Auntie Annie are some of the
characters that Paula Marais cheated.

Editorial slips such
as the following could have been avoided too:

''''Glad you enjoyed it.'' I wanted to hold her back
resisted the urged to pull
her hand. Her face. To kiss her.'' [Emphasis mine] (91)

''As the moon became clearer, I paced up and down the tiny
patio liked a bee in a jar.''
[Emphasis
mine] (149)

Saturday, 9 January 2016

The truth is: so many things are
about Meera. Meera is almost irredeemable. Life stings her anyhow. She should
just die, the world hates her. But this Meera is strong. Through life's grit and grime, she ekes out a tawdry survival. Though somewhat distracting from the
onset, this book intriguingly navigates the sorrow that is Meera. In biting
more than necessary, What About Meera tries the reader’s
patience. It packs so much together to bore. It is a Wikipedia and fiction all
in one. I will later tell you why. With a troubled Meera, the reader comes in
contact with other interesting issues. What About Meera seems like a
descant on the many issues it labours to exhaustively deal with. The woeful
result is the simplistic way many of them are left in.

With a cyclical plot, What
About Meera attempts an interesting narrative of the disturbed and the willed
culpability of all. The story begins from Dublin, a foreshadowing that shows significant bits of Meera’s life.
Durban follows after. Here, Meera’s
life is interestingly built and you see the ill luck that assails her, her
society and the Indians in South Africa. You are again taken to Dublin. This Dublin begins the narrative in the first Dublin and continues it. At Dublin, Meera seeks refuge. The last Durban shows the lapsing wick of
everything. In Meera’s society, class
and gender segregations are rife. This book shows how innocence is squashed and
spat out. There are tinges of Meera in everyone: the little voiceless girl, the
embattled feisty youth, the troubled wife, the broken spinster. From Durban to
Durblin, Meera is a pariah. Life in Dublin almost ensconces her. Ian is the
comforter as she whiles away her wispy life working at Home for Autistic
Children.

Amidst its many letdowns, What
About Meera is an interesting story.Z P Dala structures her novel in such a way that readers could pick off
interesting tidbits. The Nepalese chapter
makes for a captivating short story. In The
Twisted Twins, Z P Dala draws you into the dampened world of autism. This part
moved me. This novel is a genealogy of sorrows. Aside the lo-fi life of
Meera, What About Meera is a collection of troubles early Indian
descents in South Africa swarmed in. Meera is then a signpost of these many
woes; that exemplary battered person of all the calamities facing her ilk.

What About Meera fulfills
tripodal roles: one is about the world of autism, this world rends the soul,
the world of Stewart and the twisted twins; the other is about Meera and
her numerous psycho-ills; the third, a deep-seated Indian caste
system. You will appreciate this devious caste system well if you’ve read Arundathi Roy’s The God of Small Things and E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Those
books are good pieces on that theme. What About Meera’s attempt at
showing the evils of this caste system seems almost shallow. However, in Meera-Rajesh
relationship, Anusha-Vivek Patel flirty encounter and Haroon-Nisha marriage, Z
P Dala manages to weave this class discrimination around her narrative.
Underlining all social mishmashes in the book is this devious cultural
segregation. It heightens Meera’s troubles.

This sums up the beginning of
Meera’s doom:

“Young,
fresh, freshly pinched and fondled, not even nineteen years old. With a sharp
mind, soft heart and a beauty that only a father could see. She must go.” (pg.
63)

This book is irritatingly informative. Z P Dala tends to over-feed the reader. A part of the book reads
like a treatise on everything Indian in South Africa. The web is awash with such information. You want to know more about the Gujuratis? Google it. You
want to see how the Indians were handled during Aparthied and post-Mandela
release? Wikipedia is there. The reader does not always need fiction to know these things.
The tired way Z P Dala goes into explaining what glue does smacked me here. I was
put off. Do we really need this?

“Methylated
spirits that are used to clean mirrors in rich people’s houses. Or to be drunk
by the beggar street children from the bushes near High Chaparral, known to all
at the Unit, where you can buy any drug you desire. Even methylated spirits….
The torn-clothed street boys walk to Dhanraj’s tuck-shop table to buy bottles
of it for a fraction of the cost. Methylated spirits and sniffing glue fumes
from a paper bag quells hunger for days.” (pg. 226)

If you do not know what sniffing
glue does, you need Google not a novel.

This book captivates you at moments
like this:

“‘Wait,
just wait. Talk to me for a minute. I'm sorry it turned out that way. I was
forced to marry Kajal. My parents heard I was speaking to you, they quickly
found me a girl.'

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